Audio Note
AN/J Speaker
Floorstanding Speakers

Product Description

User Reviews

Overall Rating:

Value Rating:

Submitted by
carl cobb
a AudioPhile

Date Reviewed: July 10, 2003

Bottom Line:

This is primarily a review of the K/L model although I owned a pair of J/L speakers prior to the K models. I had to get out of the J models as I moved to a small home and needed wall mount speakers hence the K models.

Both of these speakers are wonderful and the main difference I can tell between the J and K is that the J has deeper and more natural bass (as it should since it is a much larger cabinet).

Having said that both the J and K are wonderful speakers and my REL Strata sub is often turned off as it is redundant on some material. These speakers require only 6 or more good watts of power in a medium sized room.

Overall the AN/JD's that I own are top quality boxes with little competition at the price. They are capable of convey musical character to the same degree as many boxes several times the price. Speaking from an english perspective, then can have a tendancy to sound overtly british (Warm in the treble, foward in the mid range and all there down below, if not the tightest speaker on the market), and may not be to the average American taste.

As a point of interest and for comparison, I use a Myriad T-10 CD player, Rotel RB 970BX Mk II pre amp, two RC 971 Mk II power amps, Nordost Flatline Gold speaker cable, with Audio Note silver interconnects.

To conclude they deliver music with texture and vibrance, leaving only the devout "lab-test junky" unsatisfied.

This is one of the tiny handful, if that many, of speakers designed for SE triode amps. The issue is flat impedance and not just efficiency. Horns (compression drivers) have very peaky impedance which results in aggressiveness on those peaks. So many compression driver horns despite very high sensitivity need a higher damping factor than triode amps present. The AN speakers are very flat in their impedance which is why they work so well with a se amp. They have the unrestrained dynamics good triode amps are capable of producing as a result. They also have a really wide open midrange given the very conventional looks of the speakers. Suprisingly powerful and very tuneful bass too. You hear the character of bass notes. But their real benefit is true compatibility with good triode amps. Then the lack of electronic artificaliality of this kind of amp really comes through. This is a speaker tailored to the amps, rather than the usual hi-end speaker design brief which assumes that the amp has an infinitely great dmaping factor and limitless current. In this sense they are real world speakers for triodes. They are not perfect, but since you can mate them with the inherently superior sonics of triodes the overall result is a musicality you cannot get elsewhere. This allows you to overlook (for the most part) any deficiencies in the speakers: some colorations. But you'll be enjoying music for once and not lamenting that high-end audio is a boring, rewardless hobby. And oh yes they do soundstage very well with good amps. Even instruments and voices panned hard left or right sound like they are comeing from behind and around the speakers. They are not perfect, but they are allow you the full pleasures of triode amps to shine so in this sense they are really great speakers.

A friend of mine has a pair of these. I thought they were decent speakers. The cabinets are really cheap and cabinet vibration can easily be heard. I figured he paid between $400 and $500 for the pair. I was shocked to find out how much he paid. For sound quality these rate 2 or 3 stars. For value They shold not even be considered.